Erik Laurin. Decent enough guy. He'd kept his head low, stayed out of the fight. Certainly there were no Aislyns hanging over him. She could remember him from back at school, remember him and his date at Prom, before she'd bailed. Man, what was his name? Brandon? Fuck. Didn't matter. He was probably dead. Most people were. That, or killing. That'd probably be worse.

She yawned, stretched one-armed, worked the kinks out of her back. She'd been still for a while. A long while, felt like. It was actually good to have someone else. It served as a little reminder that she was still real, still alive, still there. It had almost been possible to believe that the game had ended, that they'd all killed each other and the winner had left and somehow throughout it all they'd just forgotten to tell her. It wouldn't be so bad, living on this island all alone. She was pretty sure she wasn't going to keel over from her wound anytime soon. It would be an acceptable life.

But no. She knew that she would give up her hunt for Kris in a heartbeat if there was a chance to return home, to go back to her old life, but she wouldn't do the same to live on in isolation and boredom. She'd missed the boats, anyways, missed her chance to find glory or freedom. That was for others, for those who'd been lucky. Luck. it all came down to luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Surviving when the odds were against it. Just managing to keep existing.

Kimberly had been pretty damn lucky so far. Yeah, she'd had a tough run those first few days, with Kris and Jeremy and all that shit, but it'd toughened her up. Yeah, sure, she'd had another bad run, losing Sarah and Bridget—and, now that she thought about it, Jeremy too—but she was still alive when the vast majority of her classmates were corpses lying in the sun. More than that, she'd actually accomplished a lot. She'd done what nobody else had: found Liz Polanski and forced her to think. She'd gotten Dutchy out of Brook's web, given him a little bit of a nicer death. More than that, everyone who had crossed her, who had hurt or offended her, was supposedly dead.

All but one.

Oh, Kris. Where are you now? Do you remember me?

She waved the match in the air, snuffing the flame. A thin wisp of smoke curled away from it. She'd never understood that, how the smoke didn't come until the fire had been extinguished. Back in the real world, she'd have gone to the internet to find out. Now, she just had to accept the mystery. It was almost better this way.

"How's life been treating you?" she asked Erik. "Oh, and you haven't seen Kris, have you? Blond girl? Probably covered in blood?"